“She’s alive. I must get this dress off her arm and shoulder. Got a knife?”
“Ain’t they a million of ’em layin’ around you, lady?”
Shudderingly she turned from the red one. “How queer! How awful! Hand me that clean one over there.” Her eye fell, as she took it from him, on the handle—“Chilled steel, England, Peter Bye”—rested there stricken.
“Ought to be able to trace the murderer awful quick, don’t you think, ma’am? This man Bye would know who he sold them knives to.”
Without answering she cut away the cloth, used her handkerchief—worthless for this—to stanch the blood. “Find me a towel, there must be one somewhere.” If Peter had done this she must save Maggie in order to save him. And if this were Peter’s work—he did not love Maggie.
Ashamed of her thought she bent closer. “There’s a bad cut below the shoulder but the cut in the arm is worse. Have you a large soft handkerchief? Quick, I must stop the bleeding. I can’t manage with this stiff towel.” He was off and back in a jiffy with three handkerchiefs, immense and happily clean, the testimony of Mrs. Ellersley’s supervision.
She twisted one of them. “Now a pencil?” Somewhere out of the past floated a memory of Miss Shanley’s direction how to make a tourniquet, one of the things Joanna had meant to forget after she grew up. Subconscious memories guided her fingers. “Now where’s a bedroom? Help me to carry her there.”
She had already dispatched him to a telephone to get, if possible, Harry Portor, whose office was in the San Juan district. Puzzled by Mr. Simpson’s incoherence, the doctor promised to come at once and soon the chug-chug of his little Ford rose above the sounds of the noisy street.
Joanna ran down to let him in, meeting his astonishment as the two climbed the stairs with breathless information. Harry praised her tourniquet. “Good work, Joanna. Fortunately it’s a clean cut, no jaggedness. I suppose he was trying to get at her heart. Where’s the knife it was done with?” He busied himself with fresh bandages and restoratives.
“I don’t know,” she told him faintly. Why had she not thought of this? Now she must keep him out of the sitting-room. Her confusion escaped him, but Mr. Simpson hovering in the background had heard the question and slipping out returned with the knife.
“Here it is, doc. I was just tellin’ the lady, ought sure to be able to catch that ’sassin; man who sold him the knife’s done got his name stamped on the handle.”
Harry took it. “H’m, a surgeon’s knife.” He turned it over. “Where’s the name? Peter—why look here, Joanna, did you see this?”
“There’s a whole case in the other room, sir.”
“Yes, go get it and bring it to me. What do you suppose this means, Joanna?”
She whispered, “Wait till that man goes.”
“All right, I’ll send him off.” He sent the willing Simpson on his return with the case, to the druggist.
“Now, Joanna?”
She had her story ready. “I came to see Maggie about—about Peter, Harry. One of the girls who works at Madame Harkness, saw Sylvia last night and told her Maggie was in town.” This much was true. “So I came to see her. Just before I came, it seems, Peter came. She told me about it. I couldn’t stand it. And I caught up one of his little knives—he’d left his case here—and cut her. I must have been crazy.”
“You must still be crazy to think I’d believe that. You’re not a good liar, Joanna. Now tell me the truth, dear. Were you here when he stabbed her?”
She stuck to her story. “He didn’t stab her.”
The quiet figure on the bed moved ever so slightly, opened its lips, moaned faintly. “What’s the matter with my arm?”
Harry leaned over her. “A bad cut, Maggie! How’d you come to get it?” Her attention wandered. “Who’s that standing over there?” Joanna retreated further into the shadows. “Who are you? Oh, it hurts me here, too.” She laid her hand on her breast.
“I’m the doctor, Harry Portor, you remember me, don’t you?”
He could see her make an effort. “You’re sure Henderson’s not here? It would make him angry to see you. Peter was here a little while ago—we’re going to be married, you know. That’s why Henderson cut me.” Her voice grew stronger. “I thought he had killed me.”
Harry cast Joanna a fleeting look. “Wait down in my car,” his lips formed. She slipped down the stairs out of the house.
She sat in the car a long time while the street darkened. She saw Mr. Simpson return and hard on his footsteps Mrs. Ellersley. He must have told the news just inside the hall, for Joanna heard a shriek cut short by the closing door. Presently Harry came running down the steps, peering short-sightedly through his thick glasses at her crouching figure.
He said briefly, “A bad business, but she’s not in any danger unless there’s a breakdown from nervous shock.”
The words were meaningless to her, reviewing Maggie’s statement: “Peter was here, we’re going to be married, you know.”
When they got to her house Joanna politely asked him to come in.
“No, but wait a moment. I want to tell you something.” He fiddled with the brake a moment. “Joanna, you’ve been avoiding me lately because you know I love you and you were afraid I’d ask you to marry me. Don’t avoid me any more. I’ve got my answer. When a girl loves a man as you do Peter Bye, so much so that she’ll accuse herself for his sake—oh, it makes no difference that he was innocent—well, nobody else need think there’s a chance for him. But I’m your friend, Joanna, believe that.”
She thanked him sadly. “Good night, Harry.”
Sylvia sent Roger up to her room to tell her that Miss Vera—Vera—“I forget her other name, Aunt Janna,” had called up. She would call again the next day.
Joanna thanked him indifferently. “All right, darling, tell Mamma I’ll
